I hate sharing paywall articles but I'm happy to give bullet points. In this article Tommy Pham explains to the writer how the most frequently cited statistical metrics can sometimes fail to tell the whole story.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6940461/2026/01/05/mlb-free-agency-metrics-tommy-pham/
Short version – no team faced more high leverage relievers than the Pirates did, and that had a chilling effect on some of our hitters. For the skeptics – Pham's claims were bounced off an MLB exec who conceded that Pham is making some fair points.
The full idea that interests us here is that our ballpark and our pitching staff suppress offense, which leads to close games, which means we faced the other teams' best relievers more often. As Pham put it – albeit paraphrased heavily by me – there were lots of games that were close scores, and then we fell behind, and then our hitters ended up facing the closer instead of the mopup guy.
There is one statistical metric that attempts to put a value on this. DRC+ by Baseball Prospectus. DRC+ attempts to compensate for the quality of the pitcher. A score of 100 represents the average.
Now… seven Pirates are listed in the article. Of those seven, Spencer Horwitz is the only player who had a lower DRC+ than his Fangraphs WRC+. Pham didn't appear to suffer much himself (94 vs 96) but McCutchen's DRC+ was 12 points higher than his WRC+ and Cruz's DRC+ was 19 points higher than his WRC+.
Pham also has ideas about the effect that wind has on how defensive plays get scored and the cumulative effects of having a stronger lineup. Pham seems a bit cooler to me after reading this.
These are all relatively minor effects of course, but it does reframe our 2025 somewhat when you look back. Most of us would've said that Horwitz was our only above average hitter last year, but DRC+ thinks that Horwitz, McCutchen and Cruz all belonged between 105 and 108. (Reynolds was at 99 btw)
8 comments
The Pirates are a bad team with a bad offense, so they will face higher leverage more often, and thus higher leverage relievers. But this seems to be a truism for bad teams in general.
Just like good teams usually have a relatively easy strength of schedule because they don’t have to play themselves.
But are we saying its predictive? I wonder how you test this.
this was an awesome read. Pham’s a smart guy.
bring him home on a 3 million dollar deal and let Garcia marinate a bit longer.
Pham has always seemed smart to me. This doesn’t change the fact we were a bad team but it does reframe how we look at certain players. Thanks
I like Pham, no idea what he’s like in a locker room but I know I want him on my side if shit gets heated out there.
Pham is going to be a decent coach/manager one day, if he could control his temper 🙂
It just occurred to me. We all know how much Ben C. likes stats guys. So Pham should be signed as a utility guy. When he’s not needed in the outfield he can work in the front office compiling and analyzing stats. The first two way stats/OF player!
I think the implication is not that the offense was better than it appeared so much as that small but meaningful improvements to it (e.g. Lowe and O’Hearn) could have outsized impacts on overall production. The quality of the starting pitching, in essence, might boost any impact of positive additions to the lineup, and they could win more than we expect right now. (Barring regression, injury, etc., of course, eventualities the current roster isn’t really equipped to handle.)
I’ll never understand why Pirates fans are so obsessed with Tommy Pham. Obscene gestures with kids watching, temper, big ego, old, below average stats. Players like him are literally why we suck.